Reign of the Supermen #498: Fuzzy the Krypto Mouse

Source: Superboy vol.1 #65 (1958) and Superman Family Adventures (2012-2013)
Type: Animal
When Baltazar and Franco introduced Fuzzy the super-mouse in their wonderful Superman Family Adventures, I though he was an original creation, so I was very surprised to find out he'd appeared before, way back at the dawn of the Silver Age, in a Superboy story entitled "The Amazing Adventures of Krypto Mouse!" (reprinted in Adventure Comics #318 a few years later).
Fuzzy is one of many pets kept by little Tommy Ewell whose parents have just decided he's wasting too much time talking to the animals and want him to get find homes for them. Afraid no one would want to adopt a mouse, he frees Fuzzy who runs through a hole in the wall to the apartment next door where Professor Egglehead (don't call him Egghead) is experimenting on a piece of kryptonite. He pulls the wrong lever and blasts the rock's atoms right on top of our mousy protagonist. Oops!
Fuzzy immediately starts to grow in size, returns to Tommy's apartment (an apartment that looks like a house interior, I'm sorry but no one's apartment looks like this) where he attains human size and starts lifing pianos and playing with hot coals. After the mouse sees Superboy on the cover of the Smallville Gazette (Superboy - cover feature of the Smallville Gazette every day since 1945!), Tommy is inspired to give him the Superboy costume he got for his birthday and redub him Krypto Mouse. Almost immediately, Krypto Mouse launches into action against...
...things that look like cats. And of course, Superboy gets blamed for smashing the Nite Club's sign (well, it's spelled "Night", you got what was coming to you, Smallville strip joint owner!). When Tommy sees the Gazette cover the next day (told you), he grounds Fuzzy and takes away his costume.
But you can't stop a giant super-powered mouse, and Fuzzy flies off to join a reenactment of the Pied Piper of Hamlin (what were the odds), where he fits right in despite the fact that I have never ever seen a mouse with his particular head coloring, and where coincidentally, an informant (or "rat", ho ho) is hiding from the mob in that rodent parade.
Mobsters try repeatedly to kill Louie, but keep shooting the invulnerable Fuzzy instead! Deathly afraid of super-powered retaliation, they surrender themselves to the police who might be able to keep them safe. The police chief can spot Superboy's Silver Age m.o. anywhere.
Yes, this is the kind of insane con job Kal-El would be known for through the next decade, but he didn't do it this time, honest! The next day, Superboy helps a ship in distress by throwing its cargo on a soft beach some miles away for safe-keeping, but the cargo disappears. That cargo? Huge wheels of cheese, so what do you expect?
Superboy gives chase, but loses the giant mouse, so he decides to change back into Clark Kent. Lana Lang is patrolling the countryside in case she can catch Superboy in his undies and just as she's about to do so, she sees Krypto Mouse and shrieks (as girls do when confronted with their boyfriends in mascot outfits), accidentally protecting Clark's secret identity. And then the page count runs out, so Fuzzy turns back into a mouse, the effect of the kryptonite radiation wearing off. The mouse still has the wits to find its way back to Tommy's housepartment, where the boy is allowed to keep his pets because, get this:
Fuzzy turned a piece of coal into a huge diamond his dad can use to pay for Tommy's college and destabilize the economy. Just another day in Smallville.

Comments

SallyP said…
That...that is one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen.
Siskoid said…
I guess you're a Lana.
Martin Gray said…
I came across Fuzzy in a giant issue and was knocked out - what a creation,